Over the millions of years of evolution, we humans have developed into a highly intelligent species. We’ve developed the ability to communicate, we’ve created social order, and established norms and protocols that facilitate a (mostly) harmonious coexistence. Take, for example, the fact that we all know how to stand in line to order a beverage.
But now, after millennia of humans lining up and waiting their turn, it seems all of a sudden there’s an entire generation that doesn’t know how to queue. They loiter in the vicinity of the line, they leave long gaps between them and the person in front, making the queue, if there even is one, ambiguous at best. Are they in the queue? Are they out of the queue? It’s all very unclear and to be honest, when all you want is your coffee, it’s wildly frustrating for us olds.
Now this is making a huge generalisation about a large group of people in society, but someone needs to say it. Sorry Generation Z, we love you, but it seems like you don't know how to queue properly. What’s going on?
There’s actually a significant amount of sociological research on queueing. Corporations like Disney have invested big bucks into consumer psychology research in an effort to make their long theme park lines not feel so arduous.
There’s also a cultural aspect to queuing because different countries appear to have different queuing behaviours. The UK claims to be the best queuers around. In fact, Wimbledon has a 30-page PDF on how to queue.
With the Germans’ love for order, you’d think they would be the queueing masters, but according to an article in Quartz, that’s not the case. Apparently, they are surprisingly bad at queuing and their lines have ambiguous endings. But do your best to find the end or expect to be embarrassingly reprimanded by other queue standers.
Now Hong Kong loves a good queue. They’re orderly and efficient, they nail the queue. Mainland China though, not so much. Their queues tend to turn into chaos pretty quickly.
So cultural differences seem to play a part in queuing behaviours but research also shows that generational factors come into play. One survey in Britain found Generation Z (18-24 year-olds) are seven times more likely to cut in line than baby boomers. Similarly, Gen Z seemed pretty unfazed by queue jumpers, with just 28% thinking it was bad (not sure if they’d feel the same if they were standing in line for the latest pair of Nike Air Jordans?). Baby Boomers, on the other hand, well 66% of them say queue jumping is bad behaviour.
So why has Gen Z deviated from good old-fashioned queue etiquette?
Some people say the queuing behaviour of Gen Z comes down to a lack of classroom discipline. Back in our day, we stood in 2 quiet lines outside the class or we got the shit beaten out of us. Bring back the cane!
Or could it be queueing fitness? Has this generation had it too good? In post-communist countries, previous generations had to stand in line for five hours to get basic household products like toilet paper, and even longer if they wanted Jibbitz or Buldak Carbonara Ramen. Lines were such a big part of life in that era that in 2011, people in Poland released a nostalgic game called “Queue”, kinda like Monopoly but for queuing. Sounds… fun?
Now sports fans know a thing or two about queuing. In 1965, the lines for tickets to the AFL games in Melbourne were so impressive that they caught the attention of Harvard University sociologist, Leon Mann. With 25,000 people waiting in line for only 12,500 tickets, AFL super fans settled in for a six-day wait in Melbourne weather.
According to Mann, accommodations in the first part of the queue resembled a refugee camp. Some enthusiasts officially moved out of their homes and took up formal residence in the queue. One guy even got his mail delivered there. When nature called, friends and family held their place, but occasionally riots would break out and they'd burn people's place markers. Well, that’s one way to cut in line.
Six days might sound like a lot but apparently, we’re all going to spend an average of four years waiting in queues. Maybe Gen Z has just had jack of it.
And the Wholesome Verdict? Well, it does seem to come down to the overall differences in what each generation considers to be polite and reasonable. And while we can all learn to embrace interesting queuing behaviours, if anyone leaves a big gap, we are definitely going to assume it's the end of the line.
SOURCES:
A global guide to queuing philosophies, from Wimbledon to São Paulo, Quartz
Generation Z more likely to queue-jump and let others do the same, poll claims
No, Argentina's president did not adopt a Jewish child to stop him turning into a werewolf by Uki Goni in The Guardian
Queue Culture: The Waiting Line as a Social System, by Leon Mann in the American Journal of Sociology
The Psychology of Queuing, in Psychology, by A Furnham, L Treglown, G & Horne, G.
What’s Up Doc? Seventh Sons in Victorian and Edwardian Lancashire, by Simon Young in Folklore
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[00:00:00] Will: So every morning when I start work, the first thing I do is Leave work and go down to a cafe like a regular normal person and get a coffee. you're often there with me.
[00:00:13] Rod: I've seen you do it more than thrice.
[00:00:15] Will: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, you know, the drill. You walk in the doors of the cafe and and you line up at the till to place your order and you wait for it and stuff like that.
[00:00:25] But, you know, sometimes when you're lining up at the till, I don't know if you've seen this, there's people who are not good at lining up in the queue to order, you know, there's some sort of
[00:00:39] Rod: loitering in the vicinity
[00:00:41] Will: loitering in the vicinity of the queue. You know, you get some people that are sort of, maybe they're in line, but they're not.
[00:00:48] Rod: Are they looking at the Cronut? Are they lining up to order? You don't know.
[00:00:50] Will: Or just looking into the middle distance or leaving criminally long gaps between them and the person in front. To the point where I'm like, are you in the queue? Are you not in the queue? I don't know what's going on now.
[00:01:04] Rod: You're going to mention my one biggest beef, I'm sure. But if not, you know, tell me when.
[00:01:08] Will: Give me your beef.
[00:01:08] Rod: Queing at bars, you fucking morons. Four tills, long bar, and they all line up in a thin little pencil behind one till. And I'm looking at them going, what are you doing? This is how you queue at a bar, run at the bar as fast as you can politely.
[00:01:22] Will: So more of a, not quite a queue, but a ram of people towards the bar
[00:01:25] Rod: Like all bars throughout history until the last 10 years
[00:01:29] Will: do you know, they might say that They're better at queuing there.
[00:01:32] Rod: Oh, they're definitely better at forming a line.
[00:01:34] Will: They're putting a line in where you didn't have a line.
[00:01:36] Rod: Here's the question. How much do you need that fucking line? There are four tills, eight bar people, and you queue behind one. In bars, they're dreadful. The number of times I've been caught out, like I walk up to a bar and there's this long, thin line, I see a bunch of other tills and I go, like a normal person, I walk up to the bar and The 12-year-old barman goes, oh no, you've gotta go to the end of the queue. And I'm like, but there's four tills here. Cool. And I go to the end of the queue 'cause obviously they have my drugs.
[00:01:58] Will: So tough for you.
[00:01:59] Rod: So tough. But it really confused me because, I dunno when it happened. When I worked in bars, when I went to bars, you didn't do that. You went to the bar, everyone forces up to the front. You learn how to wiggle and whine and how to get the attention, whatever.
[00:02:11] Will: So you said that previously there was no queue and we've added queue and we're claiming they're bad at it for this?
[00:02:15] Rod: I think if, unless you mean queing is only being in a long straight line. If queing has other forms, then there was different kinds of queing.
[00:02:20] Will: Alright, I accept that what I'm about to say may be potentially a bigoted thing.
[00:02:27] Rod: You mean ageist?
[00:02:27] Will: Yes. Yes. Potentially that I might be generalizing about a large group of people in society and saying
[00:02:34] Rod: there are studies that say the more intelligent people tend to stereotype . So that just marks you smart.
[00:02:39] Will: Obviously it does. But here's the thing. Often it's your youth, your generation Z who, I'm sorry to say team. I love you. You're beautiful people. I love your work. But it seems like you don't know how to queue properly.
[00:02:59] Rod: Welcome to our wholesome show.
[00:03:01] Will: The podcast in which we two academics knock off early to grab a beer and dive down a rabbit hole. I'm Will Grant.
[00:03:10] Rod: I am Rod Lambert. I know how to queue.
[00:03:13] Will: You know how to queue? Are you good at queuing?
[00:03:15] Rod: Oh, I'm fucking tops. Top queuer. Well, because, you know, I grew up in an era where it was different. Is it true that Gen Zed really are that shit at queuing? Because I suspect it is, but you probably have done the research.
[00:03:28] Will: There are queue researchers all over the place doing a lot of things.
[00:03:31] Rod: I'm a queuist.
[00:03:32] Will: Yeah, no, totally. And you know, there's sort of the sociological research on how queues work and what it means. You know, it's like, it's a social structure and it's an embryonic, it emerges. I'll go into some of that a bit. There's also a lot of psychology, you know, what will make a queue feel like it's long, feel like it's short. And as you have mentioned in the past, there's a bunch of corporate consumer research where people are like, okay, how can people feel differently about a queue? Disney, for example, heaps of research.
[00:04:00] Rod: You can't shorten it. Let's make it feel nicer.
[00:04:03] Will: So firstly, we know there's a bunch of sort of structural things that, that will influence how people might feel about a queue
[00:04:10] Rod: I'm going to go with length, girth, smell
[00:04:12] Will: definitely smell definitely smell. So like, you know, each queue is going to be different. It depends what you're waiting for. It depends the room you're waiting.
[00:04:20] Rod: Are you in a prison or in a school?
[00:04:22] Will: Yeah. How important the thing is, you know, you'll wait a few minutes for something where you'll wait a long time for something.
[00:04:27] Rod: Trump rally.
[00:04:28] Will: The color of the room, the smell of the room. Yeah. They make a big difference.
[00:04:31] Rod: We're sensitive organisms.
[00:04:33] Will: But I wanted to go into some cultural things first. So this is about, you know, different people.
[00:04:39] Rod: Let me guess. Whitey can't queue?
[00:04:41] Will: Whitey can't queue. No cultures all around the world.
[00:04:46] Rod: Is that some racism I don't have to cut?
[00:04:48] Will: No, actually there is some whiteys that can't queue. So that firstly say there isn't a huge amount of academic research actually tracking different queuing behaviors in different countries, which is bizarre to me.
[00:04:58] Rod: I would have thought the funding would be enormous.
[00:05:01] Will: So the UK often claims that they're the world's number one queuers. They love it. They I like this, you know, they will often actually put out specific guidelines. So Wimbledon, you've got to queue up for tickets and there's a 30 page PDF on how to queue.
[00:05:14] Rod: And how to dress, what attitude to adopt. Are you allowed to eat and drink in the queue or does it depend what you're eating and drinking?
[00:05:21] Will: Yes, but yes, it does depend. There's levels. Some other countries though this one was surprising. So the Germans love a bit of order, love a bit of rules.
[00:05:30] Rod: Wait, the Germans?
[00:05:33] Will: Yes but, and this comes from a Quartz article where people were just reporting anecdotes of how people feel about queues in different countries. And this but coming from people that live in those countries and are from those countries. So they're kind of. They know. And they reckon, okay, Germans love order, but aren't great at queuing. So it's often unclear they reckon where the end of the line is in a German store. Like it's an ambiguous line and you have to try and find it. You might ask around and they'll tutt at you if you don't get it right.
[00:06:01] Rod: Okay. So like the ending is fuzzy. Know when you're in it, once you're in
[00:06:05] Will: I think so. I think so. But then sometimes like supermarket queuing is a free for all sometimes in Germany. People barge past each other to get their goods on the belt first.
[00:06:13] Rod: Just like Aldi. German brand.
[00:06:15] Will: Well, I mean, that was a surprising one. Hong Kong, orderly. Loves a queue.
[00:06:19] Rod: British and Chinese jam together.
[00:06:21] Will: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, you know, they reckon you'll find lines everywhere in Hong Kong. People respect them and they're fast and they're efficient. No one's cutting in. Mainland China. Less so. Less so.
[00:06:33] Rod: No, there is an order. It's just we are not capable.
[00:06:36] Will: Maybe. Maybe. But but apparently their cues in front of a bus stop or a local bakery or something like that quickly devolve into chaos when when the time is right.
[00:06:45] Rod: To the untrained eye.
[00:06:46] Will: Yeah. So all of this is to say that there are cultural differences between different countries.
[00:06:52] Rod: And generations.
[00:06:53] Will: And generations. This is the thing. Again, there's not heaps and heaps of academic literature on this
[00:06:59] Rod: which I'm not going to lie, is disappointing
[00:07:01] Will: but it does seem like Gen Zed is different to other generations at queuing. Some data here that does exist. One survey in Britain and admittedly, these are from reputable websites like Topgolf and TripAdvisor.
[00:07:14] Rod: They're my go tos for facts. Should I get the vaccine? I go to TripAdvisor.
[00:07:18] Will: Gen Z are more than twice as likely to push in front of a queue than baby boomers.
[00:07:23] Rod: Really? Push in. In England
[00:07:25] Will: this is in England. Another study found it was seven times as likely, like 40 percent of Gen Z will go, yep, I'm happy to push in. 6 percent of baby boomers. Well here, flipping this around.
[00:07:36] Rod: And my wife has pretty much disemboweled people in any country if she sees someone like they don't need the language.
[00:07:43] Will: So here's the flip side to this. Gen Z is way less phased by queue jumpers.
[00:07:48] Rod: You would hope so, because it's normal.
[00:07:49] Will: Well, there you go, only 28 percent of them think it's bad, whereas 66 percent of baby boomers are like, nah, that's bad.
[00:07:56] Rod: Then why have a queue?
[00:07:58] Will: Well, I don't know.
[00:07:59] Rod: I don't mind if you push in, then why queue? We're back to the anarchy.
[00:08:03] Will: So there's a big difference there. There's some other findings that seem to push in different directions that suggest different attitudes to queuing. So one says that young people may have more tolerance for waiting times in restaurants and theme parks. I think it's about what they're waiting for.
[00:08:18] Rod: Ah, that makes sense.
[00:08:19] Will: Yeah, I think that, I think that varies a lot. There's things that baby boomers won't wait for. Gen Z will wait for.
[00:08:24] Rod: Like prostate exams, baby boomers. I mean, I'll wait for that. Do you wanna get in early? No, no rush. It's fine. You go first. Please, Madam.
[00:08:31] Will: So there you go. Or flip it around. Gen Z might wait for, you know, queuing up for the new iPhone or for the new sneakers or whatever.
[00:08:37] Rod: It's part of the experience. Part of the experience. Yeah. You wanna be seen in the queue.
[00:08:40] Will: But baby boomers are like, why are you queuing up for shoes?
[00:08:43] Rod: Unless they're baby boomers from the pre wall coming down, you know, East Berlin or something. Oh yeah, sure, that's fine. But then they're like, as if there isn't a queue everywhere.
[00:08:50] Will: But another one that's weirdly inconsistent with the idea that Gen Z are happier with queue jumpers is that Young people are more likely to have queue rage. Now, I don't know if queue rage, as in like, you just get rageous.
[00:09:03] Rod: At there's a line, I'm going to go on a slaughter fest.
[00:09:06] Will: I don't know people getting really angry and going insane. No, I don't know if this is angry with people pushing in or just angry at the existence of the line and it's like, this is fucked.
[00:09:15] Rod: Have you never had that? I've had that.
[00:09:16] Will: Oh yeah, I wouldn't call it queue rage because I'm keeping it in. I'm bottling it up.
[00:09:20] Rod: That's healthy. That's what you should do.
[00:09:22] Will: So I've been trying to understand this. So I do think there is a difference going on in how younger generations are queuing now. And I'm like, okay, so what might be causing it?
[00:09:31] Rod: Lead in the drinking water in the last 20 years.
[00:09:35] Will: We've taken that out though.
[00:09:36] Rod: Less lead in the drinking water would ruin queuing.
[00:09:39] Will: Yeah. Nice theory. I didn't put that one down. I got it's the pandemic. Maybe people went weird after that. You know, we don't realize how close people should stand or not or anything like that. And that's legit.
[00:09:50] Rod: Some people take the two meters and turn it into four when there's no need for one.
[00:09:55] Will: Maybe it's social media.
[00:09:56] Rod: Because they're on their social media devices and they forget to move forward in the queue.
[00:10:00] Will: Yeah, it could be. Like literally looking, you know, you're stuck on your phone and you forget to look to look up.
[00:10:04] Rod: How many times have you seen that? We've been in a queue and you kind of look down and go, for fuck's sake, keep walking or get out of the queue. I don't care what you do, look mate.
[00:10:11] Will: Yeah, so that could be something else. Another one is social media as like, it's making people weird at interacting with humans in the real world as opposed to, you know, good at interacting with my online friends bad interacting with my offline queue enemies.
[00:10:26] Rod: The IRL experience.
[00:10:28] Will: I saw some people say it was a lack of classroom discipline, which is just I know.
[00:10:34] Rod: Bring back the rod.
[00:10:35] Will: No, they were like, literally, Back in my day, we had to line up outside in two neat rows every day.
[00:10:40] Rod: And if we fell out of the queue, they'd wrap us over the knuckles with a bit of 2x4.
[00:10:44] Will: Beat us bloody.
[00:10:45] Rod: Yep. And one of my eyes popped out, and I fucking deserved it.
[00:10:49] Will: So some people think possibly it's classroom. The problem
[00:10:51] Rod: with young people today is not enough violence in their day to day experience. Perpetrate in a way that they can no way resist. They're right. They're right.
[00:11:00] Will: So, could be. And you know, you know this person is next step to national service. Like, national service for 14 year olds.
[00:11:06] Rod: And as a 65 year old, I say it should be up to 64. There was no question made me the man I'm not today.
[00:11:13] Will: But there is one, one last possible explanation that I really like. And it's lack of queue fitness.
[00:11:23] Rod: Yes.
[00:11:24] Will: Now I don't think it's the whole explanation. But this goes back to what you were saying before about you being a good queuer but I did see a couple of generational anecdotes in that Quartz article I mentioned.
[00:11:33] Rod: Did my name come up?
[00:11:34] Will: No, but these were particularly post communist countries. So, China, Poland. So here we go. I'll read this quote. Younger generations of Poles, Poland people, Frequently hear from their parents and grandparents about how good they have it. They don't have to stand in five hour long queues just to get basic household products such as toilet paper.
[00:11:53] That's what they were forced to do in the scarce times of the communist rule in the country. Lines were such a big part of life in that era that government research agency in 2011 put out a game called Queue, which is like Monopoly but for queuing in Poland. I don't know how it's a game, but anyway.
[00:12:06] Rod: It's just a long, thin board. You don't even roll the dice. The dice actually says one minute, two minutes.
[00:12:17] Will: But they reckon, you know, people in the communist era, they were pretty used to queuing. So maybe they had a queue fitness that says Generation Z don't have that anymore.
[00:12:26] Rod: There are a lot of anecdotes about queuing in the communist era.
[00:12:30] Will: And this is where, well, it's not just the communist era, this is where I wanted to go. My favorite 1969 by Harvard University sociologist called Leon Mann.
[00:12:41] Rod: Queue specialist.
[00:12:41] Will: Well he is a queue specialist. It's one of the most important articles on queuing that there is. the thing that he did is and this is this will make you Melburnians proud is that He came down from Harvard University to investigate the queuing up for tickets at the MCG for AFL games for big AFL
[00:13:00] Rod: Don't give them two reasons to be arrogant.
[00:13:01] Will: I know I know
[00:13:02] Rod: we're melbourne and we have AFL
[00:13:06] Will: So I thought this is a nice moment for Australia to make its international record. The queue of 1965 was perhaps the most remarkable, for in that year 25, 000 people waited for 12, 500 tickets, some of them for over a week in mud and drizzling rain. Melbourne doesn't have the best weather in the world.
[00:13:24] Rod: No, it does periodically. Every 10 minutes, there's sometimes a bit of sun.
[00:13:27] Will: Queuers erected a shanty town of tents and caravans outside the stadium. And conditions, according to the Melbourne town clerk, rapidly became squalid and unhygienic.
[00:13:36] Rod: Yes, the smell of human urine and faeces Wafted through
[00:13:40] Will: Well, this is where Mann, like a sociologist got a little bit old school in his language that you might not use now.
[00:13:46] Rod: It's what I experienced in New guinea.
[00:13:48] Will: Not far off. Accommodations in the first part of the queue resembled a refugee camp. The first three families in line, numbering approximately 30 men, women, and children, pitched a Bedouin tent on the sidewalk, fronting the ticket box, and settled down to a six day wait around a blazing campfire.
[00:14:04] Rod: A Bedouin tent. You can tell because of the Persian carpets.
[00:14:07] Will: Well, yes. Yeah. He didn't need to do that. But this is lining up for tickets to like the AFL grand final or the finals.
[00:14:13] Rod: As, for millennia, the Bedouin did.
[00:14:15] Will: Six days. Six days.
[00:14:18] Rod: And that's in the late sixties.
[00:14:19] Will: Yeah, that was 65, but it kept going in.
[00:14:22] Rod: Wasn't a lot going on back then, in anywhere in Australia.
[00:14:25] Will: Nothing else to do. Some enthusiasts moved out of their homes officially and took up formal residence in the queue. Five days before ticket went on sale and this is it must be a badge of pride for these people. The general secretary of collingwood club Gordon Carlyon, received a letter addressed to mr. Alfred mcdougall care of the queue outside Collingwood football ground. And so he had to walk up and down with a letter
[00:14:46] I am quite in awe of anyone that will wait five days for anything. I would not.
[00:14:53] Rod: In a queue, you mean? I've waited six days for certain things.
[00:14:55] Will: Yeah sure. You're waiting for your deliveries and things like that. No, they had a whole bunch of systems that they do to make it, you know, you have a shift system, so people would have a couple of hours on, a couple of hours off, like they'd on their tag in for each other in a family or something like, oh, that's go the toilet and stuff like that.
[00:15:08] Rod: No poo in the queue?
[00:15:09] Will: No, you don't poo in the queue. You're allowed to, you're allowed to duck off to do that. And you mark your space, like either with your family or a box or something like that, but occasionally riots would break out and they'd burn people's place markers. There are also professional queuers.
[00:15:21] Rod: So what do you want to be son? Musician, lawyer? Queuer.
[00:15:25] Will: So this is two days before the ticket sales opened at the Melbourne stadium, 20 students flew from Tasmania to the mainland to join the queue.
[00:15:33] The airline company, which hired them to buy the tickets, provide them free return flights, accommodation and taxies during their day. So basically they were paid a dollar an hour to stand in the queue for five days.
[00:15:45] Rod: So back in when?
[00:15:47] Will: 1965.
[00:15:48] Rod: That's not nothing.
[00:15:49] Will: It's not nothing.
[00:15:50] Rod: My first job was in the eighties and that was three dollars an hour. So I'm thinking a dollar an hour in the sixties to stand still, not too shabby.
[00:15:55] Will: They're also counting boys that had run up and down and count the number and would tell people that at a fee, like 10 cents what position they are in the queue and pass around rumors and gossip and things like that what they knew about him.
[00:16:07] Rod: Fucking great job. Come on. That's awesome.
[00:16:10] Will: It's such a Dickensian job.
[00:16:15] Rod: Golly gee, mister.
[00:16:16] Will: But anyway, they seem to have had a great old time of it. And yeah, this was not everyone, but people maybe had a bit more of a queue fitness 50 years ago.
[00:16:25] Rod: Yeah, for sure. well, because we have now internet queuing, don't we?
[00:16:28] Will: That's the thing. That's one of the big things here is that so many big ticket items you know, your new Taylor Swift concert or whatever it is You're queuing online and I'll guarantee your gen Zed have a lot of fitness for pressing the refresh on the Tickitek page and you refresh, refresh to try to get in. And I've seen people working hard to get into those ticket sales, but none of the fitness for standing outside in a line for five days now, not saying which one is right.
[00:16:54] Rod: I've experienced the electronic one years ago. I was meeting a buddy not from England, nor was I, but we were meeting in London. And Queens of the Stones were playing at the, is it the Odeon was in the fancy theater there. And he was in Samoa, I'm in Australia and we were online queuing, we were taking in shifts to queue for tickets, and took for three days we're queuing for tickets. And it wasn't until we got there, they said, Oh no, they weren't available to internationals.
[00:17:18] It didn't say that anywhere on the website. But they'd let us get in there and we're bashing the tickets and bashing the refresh. That was my one and only more than a couple of hours queuing.
[00:17:25] Will: I do want to know that there are the records for number of people like queuing, like, cause I know that there are people that were on multiple computers when Taylor Swift's tickets were going around a few months ago. You know, hitting the F5 on a few different computers. So that's one other possible explanation. I've seen some other people talk about it in terms of egalitarian this like, a queue is an egalitarian thing.
[00:17:46] Like we're all in it first come first served. And we all look after the, it's a system that sort of is meant to be.
[00:17:51] Rod: Cause you can afford to be in the queue.
[00:17:53] Will: Yeah, there is something about that. So maybe there's a bit of, no, the rich get around this anyway. They have other queuing systems.
[00:18:00] Rod: Or even think about American voting systems. I remember hearing this, you know, when they say, well, you line up to vote and you have to do it on a weekday or you have to do it on the weekday, whatever it is. And one of the arguments is, well, people who cannot afford to take 10 minutes out of their jobs. So the queuing itself might be egalitarian, but the ability to actually line up and wait 5, 000 hours to vote.
[00:18:18] Will: I think the point is queuing can be egalitarian. But, you know, I think American voting queues is an excellent example. You look at some of the let's say booths that might have a lot of white voters the queues are very short because there's, yeah, but there's a lot of booths around there so the queues are very short. But in poorer areas, more urban areas where a lot of black voters are, sometimes the lines get incredibly long. And so it literally is a different rationing.
[00:18:43] Rod: And then you get that, what is it? Oh, no, the clock's cut off. You've been in the queue for two days. It's like, nah, but the voting's finished.
[00:18:48] Will: So maybe Gen Z don't believe the bullshit. They don't believe that queuing is an egalitarian thing. And maybe they're thinking, ah, screw this.
[00:18:55] Rod: I say, don't blame the queue. Blame the context.
[00:18:59] Will: I found out a few other cue facts for you before I give you a verdict on what I reckon is causing Gen Z to be different.
[00:19:05] So Stanley Milgram, he did a lot of famous studies, but he did a cute queuing study in the 1980s. Participants in the social experiment were told to approach a queue between the third and fourth person and calmly say in a neutral tone, excuse me. I'd like to get in here.
[00:19:19] So just saying I'd like to get in here. Nothing more than that. After stepping into the line and facing forward, only 10 percent of deviant cue cutters got ejected. Yeah, something like there's a lot of, there's a lot of frowns that you're getting.
[00:19:32] Rod: Was there ever one where he said, okay, do that, but then faced the wrong way? Cause that would be gold.
[00:19:38] Will: Look, there is absolutely people doing weird things like that. I did read this story about queuing in India and and it was just a personal anecdote, so it didn't really tell anything, but it was this woman was saying she joined a queue and this rather large man came up behind her and and pushed his belly into her back. It's just like, Oh, this is gross. I'm going to turn, I'm going to turn sideways and no, he came a bit further so that his belly was resting in her elbows.
[00:20:04] It's like, he's getting a belly hold. Intimate. So I did like this. So this was you know, how close you should stay. So, so not what happens when you face the wrong way. This was a 1970s study where they sent invader children. So I don't know how they got, Five year olds to do this, but they got five year olds to stand less than six inches behind adults in a queue for the theater. The reactions of adults differed depending on the age of the children
[00:20:28] Rod: and the disposition of the adults.
[00:20:30] Will: Five year olds were elicited a positive response, like, aren't you adorable. 10 year olds and above were greeted with a negative response. So it's like, you're standing too close, you little weirdo.
[00:20:39] Rod: Fuck off Frank. Cause they're old enough to know better.
[00:20:42] Will: All right. Here's one that it counted the most successful ways to queue jump to cut in the line. So, so don't use these in front of rod, but if you do want to know what's going to work, So open invitation. That's when there's a space between people there and you act if you think is the gap is the end of the line and join that spot is my favorite
[00:21:01] Rod: ignorance is always the, that's the secret though. Like, Oh, sorry.
[00:21:06] Will: The chat and cut, which start up a conversation with someone in a good spot in the line
[00:21:09] Rod: and then rub their stomach and step in.
[00:21:11] Will: Well, I mean, if it's your friend, then you're legitimately
[00:21:13] Rod: you can't get mad about that. I agree. Like something you kind of go, Oh, but you know, that's fine.
[00:21:18] Will: I'm going to be late. Telling a lie to people. The sorry, where you just go sorry, just keep being a shit.
[00:21:24] Rod: Oh, that's a great one.
[00:21:25] Will: And and the final one, I just have to ask a quick question to the person up the front. So you go right to the counter and say, I just have to ask a quick question. And then while you're there, you just buy the tickets.
[00:21:33] Rod: So I got away with murder with the first iPhone I bought. So it was the iPhone too. Cause iPhone one wasn't as huge and I always wait for the next, you know, the second product
[00:21:40] so my wife would need it. She was like, I don't know about this Mac rubbish and this iPhone stuff and blah, blah, blah. I just need a new Ericsson. So we go up to the Apple store in town, huge queue, everyone's standing there, you know, everyone looking bored and waiting and they've got the, you know, the red ropes, et cetera, et cetera. And they said, Oh, anyone here not for an iPhone?
[00:21:57] And my wife puts her hand up and cool. So I wandered in with her. And he goes do, gets the phone, he goes, and can we do anything else for him? And I said, Oh, can I have one of those iPhones? He goes, yeah, sure, man. And I walked out.
[00:22:08] Will: So all of that talk of hating queue jumpers.
[00:22:11] Rod: I hadn't intended to, but once I got there, I'm like, this is going to work. I figured I'm here now, let's see what happens. He's like, yeah, no worries, dude. And I thought, you fucking clown.
[00:22:20] Will: There you are. You massive dirty queue jumper.
[00:22:22] Rod: It was a shitty one too, because that was like the first real big one that was around and the queue was long and Canberra doesn't queue like that. Fucking wild. I almost feel guilty.
[00:22:32] Will: All right. So a few other little queue facts for you. We're going to spend an average of four years of our lives waiting in queues.
[00:22:38] Rod: I didn't need to know that.
[00:22:39] Will: Average lifespan. Let's say it's 80 ish. You're going to spend four years.
[00:22:44] Rod: And that's waking life.
[00:22:46] Will: I don't know if that's physical queues or it counts being on hold or something. But we are happier when we know there's people behind us.
[00:22:51] Rod: Other people's suffering does calm me.
[00:22:52] Will: No, I always feel like an idiot. Like if I joined a queue at the end and there's no one behind, I'm like. It feels shorter if there's something to do while you're doing it.
[00:22:59] Rod: Well that's why the genius came from, when I first heard about all this queue stuff was when they like in DMV equivalents here, you know, vehicle registration places, and one time af after many years of lining up, I'm just going, oh, well I'm gonna be here for the rest of my life. I walked in and they said, take a number and sit down. And I thought, this is magic. But also it means you're not worried about it. You can sit down and relax. It doesn't change the time, but it changes the experience of the time.
[00:23:22] Will: That's something that definitely came up in research. Anxiety and uncertainty make it seem longer. So you reduce that and you just go, okay, well, I can't do anything that the number will come up. Then people are far less worried about it.
[00:23:32] Rod: And a phone company, the one I'm not with anymore, I won't mention who they are, but you know, they're quite large. I walked up to their store and went, oh, I need to get a phone. And they said, cool. Give us your name and your number and we'll text you when it's five minutes away. Yeah. And so I spent 20 minutes cruising around the mall, spending money I didn't need to spend. But then I didn't mind, but if I'd been standing there for 20 minutes, I would have been eating people's faces.
[00:23:52] Will: So that's why there's a whole bunch of business research into reducing queue times, making queues feel, you know, if you have to have a queue, then make it feel better, make it feel like a party or, you can imagine like the outside the sneakers. The brand new sneakers are coming in. Everyone's a community. All the AFL football tickets, you know, this is a community. So that would make it feel more fun. So what do you reckon? What's your wholesome verdict on why Gen Z can't queue properly?
[00:24:18] Rod: Look, I think there are differences in the way in what we consider to be polite and reasonable. And so the way I used to queue and everyone used to queue at bars was no one was particularly offended because it's what you did. You kind of elbowed through, not violently, but you kind of wiggled your way through, you learn how to get the attention of the barkeep or, you know, you know, you hold your money out and you learn strategies, you know, that was just normal. So I think. That now would be considered very rude, but for us, that was standard behavior. So there's a change in what is considered reasonable. I don't think it's necessarily about queuing per se.
[00:24:46] Will: No, I think queuing is an example, a symptom of wider things and, You know, changing what, what's considered reasonable or how you play in space, that might be to do with social media, rise in anxiety or rise in different interpersonal relationships.
[00:25:00] Rod: We'll just call it generational factors.
[00:25:02] Will: There you go. There you go. It's okay, Gen Zed. I think your queuing is Interesting. And we can all learn to embrace everyone's different style of queuing behavior but if you leave a big gap, I am definitely going to pretend it's the end of the line
[00:25:14] all right. In the mailbag. Okay. I just wanted to a shout out, a thank you to flying Sherlock who had very nice things to say about our our Paul Erdos episode, but of course corrected our pronunciation. Paul eddish. So, there you go. From Deb on our people demonstrating things are safe, had a university professor, an environmental scientist, who drank a glass of glyphosate in front of the class to prove it's safe.
[00:25:41] Rod: And at his funeral, he was well remembered. Fuck me. That's a big call.
[00:25:45] Will: You asked a while ago, just an update you asked a little while ago about 7th son of a 7th son. I just did a little bit of a rummage on that one for you, and turns out Perry Como was not really a 7th son of a 7th son.
[00:25:56] Rod: That prick lied to you , he's lied to me about a lot of things, but I thought I could trust him on that.
[00:25:59] Will: There's a couple of different definitions. I mean, you can have sort of the maximalist version, so you've got to have 7 sons all in a row no daughters in between.
[00:26:06] Rod: No deaths, blah blah blah, there must be.
[00:26:08] Will: Well, I don't know about the deaths or not. So the next one is sort of, you have seven sons, but you might have daughters as well interspersed in there.
[00:26:14] Rod: But that's the Lazy Man's version.
[00:26:15] Will: No, the lazy Man's version is the seventh child and you happen to be a boy of a seventh child.
[00:26:21] Rod: Show me, show me on any Iron Maiden discography where it says Seventh child of a seventh child
[00:26:26] Will: no, it doesn't. It doesn't.
[00:26:27] Rod: That's my go-to
[00:26:28] Will: so perry Como was that last type, and I don't know, I don't know if that really counts. I don't think he got magic powers for that. They're super rare actual seventh son of a seventh son. You know, you can do the maths on this. So, you know, if a family has seven kids, the odds that they're all boys is like a one in 128. So it's like, 50 percent times 50% to get there. And then if you go to seven sons again, it's like one in 16, 384 of those families that have seven children each time. So it's super rare within that for sure. And you know, the number of families that make it to seven children, becoming less and less in the seventies in the U S it was like 6 percent of women got to seven.
[00:27:06] Rod: Oh, I thought it would have been higher even then. Okay.
[00:27:08] Will: In 2006 it was down to 0. 5%. If you work that out, you know, the odds on a family having a seventh son of a seventh son now seems to be like one in 655 million. So maybe in the world there is one born every decade or something like that.
[00:27:24] Rod: Wild. This is why they have magic powers. You need rarity to get magical powers. That's just science.
[00:27:29] Will: I get it. I get it. Niger is probably the place where you're most likely to find them. They still, well, just in the sense that they still have 6. 82 births per woman. Anyway, you want to know what it gets you? In Western Europe, it's pretty good stuff. So you get foresight and healing in England, being able to enchant snakes in Italy
[00:27:46] Rod: what a fucking use. Yay. I can't make money. I can't turn water into wine. But this snake, watch this snake. It's mesmerized by me. That'd be five bucks.
[00:27:57] Will: Well, in America, supposedly a seventh son of a seventh son can discern everything that lies in the depths and interior of the globe in part. Mines guy, like, there be gold, like seven sons know where the gold is.
[00:28:10] And healing is a common one. So Thomas Lupton wrote in 1660, it is manifest by experience that the seventh male child by just order, never a girl or wench being born between
[00:28:21] Rod: a girl or wench. Congratulations. It's a wench. It's not a girl, it's a fucking wench.
[00:28:27] Will: How can you tell from day one? It's a wench.
[00:28:30] Rod: That's the way she came out.
[00:28:32] Will: Doth heal only with touching through a natural gift, the king's evil. Which is a special gift of God. Some people did say that you shouldn't have to pay your taxes if you're a seventh son of a seventh son.
[00:28:42] Rod: Fair enough. That's very unusual. Why not? Why not? But if you put that out there, there might be two born every 10 years.
[00:28:48] Will: Yeah. This guy said they put a bill to the English parliament, no Scottish parliament in 1682, that any tradesmen having seven sons together without the intervention of a daughter is declared free of all public burdens and taxes because what they're saying is what they offer to the economy.
[00:29:03] Rod: Okay. And that's just seven sons, not seven of seven.
[00:29:07] Will: Eastern Europe. It's not so good. It means he might be a vampire or a werewolf.
[00:29:10] Rod: Everything. Everything. I don't know how many episodes we've had. Eastern Europe. His head is crooked. Must be vampire. This man, only two shoes. Vampire. Vampire. But his car broke down in the middle of the road. Fucking vampire or werewolf because cars warewolf.
[00:29:30] Will: But you can get out of that if you are baptized seven times in seven different churches so that'll rub off the vampire.
[00:29:37] Rod: I suppose you could do that in a day, unless it costs a lot.
[00:29:40] Will: The only ones I could find are actual seven sons. And there's probably more out there, obviously not documented by history. An NFL hall of fame footballer, Len Dawson and Ivor Powell, a Welsh football player who started his life working down in the mines for two shillings a day but he escaped that
[00:29:54] Rod: of course he was in the mines.
[00:29:55] Will: Of course he was. Cause he could see all of that. So if you are a seventh son of a seventh son write in and tell us what powers you have.
[00:30:02] Rod: No, write and tell us where the gold is.
[00:30:07] Will: So what else have you been thinking about?
[00:30:08] Rod: Oh, I've been thinking about, I got a couple of things came to mind. I didn't realize this because it turns out that people who do have these don't imagine anyone else doesn't and vice versa in a monologue, like an inner voice. Oh, so like when I'm thinking about something or I'm trying to calm down or I'm trying to get myself going or blah, blah, there is definitely a me in my head that talks.
[00:30:28] But I'm told there are people who absolutely do not and neither side can make sense of the other having or not having it.
[00:30:34] Will: I don't know if I do. I need to run a test to know. I feel like I've got a voice.
[00:30:39] Rod: You seem like someone who does, but I don't know if that's true. And then it goes further. As I was looking into that, someone's tried to give an inner monologue to AI.
[00:30:48] Will: Oh my God.
[00:30:49] Rod: Anyway, that's one.
[00:30:50] Will: Okay. That's an interesting one. I like that.
[00:30:53] Rod: It is interesting.
[00:30:54] Will: Well, I got one. This one came from the listener from Liboi Liboi, L I B O I. He wants us to do an episode on Christopher Havens. I don't know if you've heard of this guy.
[00:31:03] Rod: Oh, he's the the penguin jungler and manicurist.
[00:31:06] Will: No. He's a man serving a two decade prison sentence for murder who turned in prison to advance mathematics and published a bunch of significant discoveries in number theory that he had to work out by hand.
[00:31:18] Rod: I read something that wasn't about him, but he came up. And if it's not him, then there's another one. Went to jail with almost functionally illiterate as I recall it. And then not so much and maths in particular
[00:31:32] Will: I mean, don't do murdering. But if later you want to turn to maths
[00:31:36] Rod: and to be fair, if you're going to be a murderer, at least eventually do something useful as well. On the scheme of murderer to not murderer. If there's steps along the way, be a nice murderer or a useful one like Dexter. My other one, Mariko Aoki. She wrote an essay in 1985 and put it in the Japanese magazine, Honno Zashi, which is book magazine.
[00:31:59] Will: Oh, thank you, Japan.
[00:32:01] Rod: In which she related how she came to the realization over a number of years that every time she walked into a bookstore, She really need to take a dump.
[00:32:13] Every time. She's in a book store.
[00:32:14] Will: What? What? What? What?
[00:32:15] Rod: Got a crap.
[00:32:16] Will: That is not a thing.
[00:32:18] Rod: It's a thing.
[00:32:19] Will: It's a thing. I can't believe that.
[00:32:21] Rod: Readers wrote into this magazine and said, you know what? Me too. So it became known as the Mariko Aoki phenomenon. And it's also related to what's called the lock in key syndrome but I'll save that surprise.
[00:32:34] Will: I like that. I do want to know.
[00:32:36] Rod: Who doesn't? Who doesn't? How could you not want to know that?
[00:32:38] Will: No, I'm worried. I'm worried that it might be contagious. That if I hear about it, then suddenly that makes a lot of sense. I, I do need to also.
[00:32:45] Rod: Well, look, Burkholdt's Manual of Swedish Birds. Jesus, I need to poo.
[00:32:51] Will: I got one more that I've been thinking about. We just got a new washing machine, old washing machine crapped his decks and yeah, so yeah, we bought what I thought was the same one. You know, it's, I think it's 13 years later or whatever. So yeah. It was the same one but they updated it to add internet
[00:33:08] Rod: You don't need that. Well, first you got to get your wifi password. So I just want to wash my jocks.
[00:33:15] Will: This is what I want to know. Like it's, it's weirdly got less useful functions than the one that was 10 years ago
[00:33:21] Rod: but a lot more often.
[00:33:23] Will: Oh my God. But it's like, there's standard stuff that we want to do. Like, okay. You know, you just want to rinse something and then say, you can't do that. Can't do that.
[00:33:30] Rod: No, not until you've logged in.
[00:33:31] Will: No. And so it got me thinking, I mean, how many dumb things have internet that don't need to have the internet. I just want a list. I just want a list of all of these terrible things.
[00:33:41] Rod: We gotta do that. We can just get angry together. Alright. But in a great way.
[00:33:45] Will: Remember! If you have things to suggest or stuff you want to show us, make a comment in the YouTubes or anywhere where you can comment
[00:33:53] Rod: or ping us an email. cheers@wholesomeshow.Com
[00:33:56] Will: Love ya.
